Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

It's time for the feel bad sequel of 1984! Join Chris and Lizzie as they explore how bad breakups and broken backs contributed to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg being branded villains by People magazine. Plus, why Ke Huy Quan's "Short Round" is the real hero, Kate Capshaw paying a steep price for not reading the entire script, and why we still love Harrison Ford even though he stole Short Round's lines. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Life can be a lot sometimes. Traffic, taxes, and that dreaded text that just says, "Call me." Why not go where life is good? Escape to Pluto TV. Turn off all your day-to-day problems and turn on the movies and shows you already love. From Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy to Dirty Dancing, from Alias to The X-Files. Channel surf live TV or browse the menu to find exactly what you're in the mood for. It's all free, no subscription, no credit card, no catch. The best things on TV are free, so escape to Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.

• 0:31Lizzie Bassett?

  12 celebrities, one Don, and cold, hard cash. From the producers of The Traitors comes The Mob, a new Hulu original series now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. In this unique new reality competition show hosted by the iconic Parker Posey, 12 celebrity contestants are about to become members of a powerful family. For two weeks in a lavish Italian villa, they'll shake down and hustle to win a share of up to $250,000. And every good mob needs a Don. Whoever they choose to lead them will have absolute power deciding who stays and who gets taken out, who makes money, and who walks away with nothing. In a game of power where loyalty and trust are the currency,

• 1:15Lizzie Bassett?

  will the most powerful reality contestant in TV history be able to keep the family happy? And if they're overthrown by the mob, who will step up and become the new Don? Let the games begin. Watch The Mob, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 1:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Hello and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a screaming sequel that left its impact on the ratings system and on Chris's heart, perhaps, as we learned in one of our more recent episodes. I'm one of your hosts, Lizzie Bassett, here as always with Chris Winterbauer. And Chris, what movie do you have for us today?

• 2:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, the heart ripping joke was right there for the taking.

• 2:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm sorry.

• 2:25Chris Winterbauer?

  And you didn't do it. We're gonna move on.

• 2:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Yay!

• 2:27Chris Winterbauer?

  We're talking Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the feel bad movie of 1984. I'll save my thoughts for a moment. This is sequel month. If you guys didn't know, we did a poll in the fall and we offered a number of sequels to films that we've covered and the top two winners were The Empire Strikes Back and Temple of Doom, the second darker entries into the respective Lucas and Spielbergian trilogies, George Lucas obviously spanning both. So, Lizzie, I have to ask you, what are your thoughts on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Thoughts as a child and thoughts as a grown adult person?

• 3:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I believe I've seen this, although upon rewatching it for the podcast, I was less certain that I have actually sat down and watched the whole thing prior to now. I grew up on Raiders of the Lost Ark, for sure. That's the one that I remember. I love that movie. Sex, criminal boat, Indiana Jones aside, this one, as I was watching it, I was like, okay, I remember this image. I remember this sequence. I'm sure I watched clips of it on TV, all to say, I don't think I'd ever actually sat down and watched this whole thing. I have a lot of thoughts and a lot of feelings, not unlike Kate Capshaw, at least in the feelings department, maybe not the thoughts. There's almost no plot to this movie. There's basically no character motivation, with the potential exception

• 3:41Lizzie Bassett?

  of the movie's only hero, played by Ki Hui Kwan. But it starts at 11 and it stays there for two hours. There is just almost no variation to it. It's very fun. I certainly enjoyed watching it. I'm so sorry, Kate Capshaw. I know that you are a wonderful actress, performer, artist, wife to Steven Spielberg. I find her borderline unwatchable in this movie. She- Just screeches her way through the whole thing and it's so slapsticky and weird. And I don't know why she's there, other than that she like can't go anywhere else, which isn't really that fun. And it's also like, she probably could go somewhere else if she just set her mind to it.

• 4:22Lizzie Bassett?

  So I guess where I stood with this is that the first Indiana Jones felt so epic, both on, you know, the fun world traveling scale, but also on what was at stake for the characters and what they were trying to get. And I don't think this movie has that, really. Especially because Short Round does not continue beyond this movie. If this had been kind of his entry into the franchise and then that character, you know, continues on as sort of Indiana Jones's true love in some ways, which is kind of how they set him up in this movie, which I really like, then I would be more on board for it. But they don't. It kind of just goes nowhere.

• 5:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Fun stunts aside. So I guess that's my review of this. It's very fun. There's almost no substance. There's just nothing going on here, really. So that's it. That's my review. Chris, what about you?

• 5:18Chris Winterbauer?

  So I, I did see this movie a lot as a kid. And I think because it felt very taboo and provocative. And as we'll talk about with the rating system, this movie felt far more graphic and violent than the first movie. Although I actually don't think it is. I think a lot of that has to do with, if you're seeing Nazis melt, there is a different feeling evoked than seeing an innocent man's heart being ripped out of his chest. So I really liked this movie as a kid. It was, I don't know if it was my favorite Indiana Jones, but it's the one we kind of watched over and over again, in large part because as a young kid, seeing Ki Hui Kwan as Short Round was really exciting because he was a kid hero with Indiana Jones.

• 5:58Lizzie Bassett?

  He's the best part of this movie.

• 6:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. And there was like a very fun wish fulfillment element of it where you think, wow, I could be Indiana Jones's sidekick that I really liked. Hadn't seen it in a while, rewatched it. I think this movie's, on the one hand, an extremely well crafted roller coaster. That's basically what it is.

• 6:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 6:16Chris Winterbauer?

  It's just getting you from set piece to set piece. I stand by, I think the first 15 minutes are pretty outstanding. I don't agree with you on Kate Capshaw. I'm one of the few people, I like Kate Capshaw in this movie quite a bit. I don't mind Willie Scott. I feel like the, as we'll talk Judy Holiday thing that she's doing is totally fine with me. It's so absurd, but I'm kind of in for it. And yet, this movie has all sorts of weird, Western lens sort of exaggerations, fictionalizations, straight up blasphemy when it comes to presenting, obviously, Indian culture. And we will dive into that specifically from the perspective of folks from that culture later on in this project. So it's a movie that feels very retrograde in many ways. I don't think it's aged as well as the other Indiana Jones films have in very specific ways.

• 7:02Chris Winterbauer?

  And yet, I stand by, I still love watching Ki Hui Kwan in this movie. I think Harrison Ford is very good embracing his darkness in this movie.

• 7:09Lizzie Bassett?

  He's totally watchable. I love Harrison Ford. He's very fun. I think he's substantially more fun to watch in the first movie, perhaps because he's not on quite as sure footing. And I know Indiana Jones as a character is, you know, very confident in himself. But there was something really alive about watching Harrison Ford find it in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And, you know, moments like the guy with the swords and then Harrison Ford just shoots him, which, you know, famously, we know was a production issue. But moments like that, like unexpected moments like that, I found very lacking in this movie.

• 7:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure. All right, well, let's dive in because we'll get into all the problems and all the ways in which this movie fell short for a lot of audience members at the time. And a lot of folks were disappointed in both Spielberg and Lucas, and we'll talk about that. To your point about Short Round specifically, the way in which this movie is so different from The Empire Strikes Back structurally is that this is technically a prequel. So this exists one year prior to Raiders of the Lost Ark.

• 8:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh.

• 8:10Chris Winterbauer?

  The chronology, if anybody's unfamiliar. So the Raiders of the Lost Ark, I believe part of this choice was Lucas not wanting to continue with the Nazi storyline. And so if you were to do it one year later, in theory, the Nazi threat has Only grown on the world stage, so better to do it one year prior before Indy gets involved with the Nazis.

• 8:30Lizzie Bassett?

  And it's interesting because, you know, listen, if you want to say villain, it's a Nazi every time. And they work great in the first movie. To your point, I think the villain element of this movie really doesn't work super well.

• 8:42Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. Well, I think it's the weakest part of this movie by far. It's the weakest slash most racist part of this movie by far. And I have a pitch.

• 8:50Lizzie Bassett?

  I was gonna ask you, who would you have made the villain?

• 8:52Chris Winterbauer?

  There's an easy pitch, but let's save it.

• 8:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 8:54Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's actually a pitch I think they could have done, meaning it's easy to always pitch movies from the past when there were different value systems, et cetera.

• 9:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Is it a communist?

• 9:03Chris Winterbauer?

  No, but I actually think there was a pitch available to them, maybe. And you can tell me if you agree or disagree, and we'll go from there.

• 9:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay. Last thing, this movie requires an enormous suspension of disbelief in the fact that somehow.

• 9:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Which part?

• 9:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Honestly, it's not the heart ripping out of the chest.

• 9:22Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 9:23Lizzie Bassett?

  It's the fact that everyone in this tiny rural town in India speaks English. Why? Why would literally everyone speak English? Come on. Some like you subtitles. Anyway, and how does Harrison Ford know about their stone? Whatever. It's just, you have to make so many leaps so fast to get to where they're going in this movie. And it's fine, I did it. It's just, it doesn't feel as smart as Raiders of the Lost Ark did to me. Also, it's the Ark of the Covenant. We all know what it is. I don't know what the fuck this stone is. Anyway, continue.

• 9:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I think that they, obviously, the Ark of the Covenant famously pitched by Philip Kaufman in the original film as the MacGuffin. And then they returned to religious iconography with the Holy Grail in the third film, and they returned to Nazis as well, so.

• 10:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, stick with that.

• 10:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, they found a formula. They were trying to mix it up in this movie.

• 10:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Make it the Holy Grail. Come on, guys.

• 10:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Don't disagree with you, but let's get into the why, because they were trying to do something very specific with this movie. I think in some ways it's successful, in many ways it's not.

• 10:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Does it promote a roller coaster?

• 10:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, and there's some specific references cinematically and in terms of film history that we need to talk about as well. Before we dive in, of course, the details, Indiana Jones and the Temple Temple of Doom is an action-adventure film ostensibly directed by Steven Spielberg. It is the second entry into the ongoing Indiana Jones series. It was penned by screenwriting duo and married couple Gloria Katz and Willard Hike, who we have discussed on the Howard the Duck episode.

• 10:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Uh oh.

• 10:51Chris Winterbauer?

  They're oft collaborators with George Lucas. It was based on a story by George Lucas, although I think there was input from a lot of folks on the story. And it was produced by Lucas, Robert Watts, Frank Marshall, and Kathleen Kennedy. It stars, of course, Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, Kate Capshaw as Willie Scott.

• 11:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Ah!

• 11:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, as lungs, as we'll call her. Ki Hui Kwan as Short Round, Amrish Puri as Mola Ram, Roshan Seth as Chatar Lal, and many, many more. It was released in the United States on May 23rd, 1984, after a premiere on May 8th in Westwood, California. It was produced by Lucasfilm, distributed by Paramount Pictures. And the IMDb logline reads, "In 1935, Indiana Jones is tasked by Indian villagers with reclaiming a secret stone stolen from them by a secret cult." Lizzie shaking her head, she disagrees, or she does not approve.

• 11:44Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't approve. A child trafficking cult, which I guess is a real cult, except I don't think they were child trafficking. Anyway, continue.

• 11:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Sources for today's episode include, but are not limited to, Indiana Jones: Making the Trilogy, the 2003 documentary, The Making of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: Official Collector's Edition, the 1984 Making of Magazine, Temple of Doom: An Oral History, published in 2012 by Empire, The Complete Making of Indiana Jones by J.W. Rensler, and many, many more articles, retrospectives, and interviews with those involved in the film. So, Lizzie, the question remains, how did the two men behind the most successful, family-friendly, four quadrant films of all time?

• 12:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:21Chris Winterbauer?

  E.T. and Star Wars make the feel-bad blockbuster of the 1980s? And what went wrong? So to tell the story of the Temple of Doom, the darkest entry in the Jones franchise, we need to head back to an unexpectedly dark moment for our heroes, or anti-heroes. It's June of 1981, and Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are back in Hawaii. As they are oft to return whenever they have a movie that's about to be released. And they're waiting to see how Raiders of the Lost Ark will be received. If it does well, according to Lucas, Spielberg is on the hook for two more. Not contractually, but Lucas made him promise that if he directed one, he would direct a second and third because Lucas claimed that he had three stories in mind.

• 13:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Spielberg agreed, and now they waited on the verdict from audiences. And they engaged in a superstitious tradition. They built a sandcastle and they waited to see how long it would take the waves to destroy it. And this time it lasts a pretty long time. And they think this is a sign Raiders is gonna work. But the opening for Raiders of the Lost Ark was not quite as strong as they were hoping. It made $8.3 million in its first weekend. Spielberg later said that he thought they'd failed. And I think he was just a bit sensitive because do you remember what movie he directed before Raiders of the Lost Ark?

• 13:35Lizzie Bassett?

  1941.

• 13:36Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right, which seemed to prove that Hollywood's golden boy, who had done Jaws and then Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was fallible. But then something wonderful happened. Nothing. Raiders of the Lost Ark held steady in its second weekend at $8 million. And it was back atop the box office in its sixth weekend, and it only dipped to $6.4 million, which is less than a 20% dip across six weekends.

• 13:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 13:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Nowadays, if your movie dips only 20% from weekend one to weekend two, that would be a miracle. This is over six weeks. It spent most of the following nine weeks as the number one film in the country, 40 weeks in the top 10. As you mentioned, Lizzie, very fun ride of a movie. I think people were enamored with Indiana Jones. And by October, it had become Paramount's biggest movie ever, passing Grease.

• 14:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, wow.

• 14:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it was in theaters for 10 months, brought in over $200 million, and was the highest grossing film of 1981. People couldn't get enough of it. Pulp-y, throwback, action, archaeologist adventurer ripped from the cereals of George Lucas's youth. Marion Ravenwood, maybe she was a little too young, but they didn't really focus on that in the movie, thank God. The pair didn't have much time to celebrate because they were both extremely busy. Spielberg's producing Poltergeist, he's directing E.T., and Lucas is writing and producing Return of the Jedi. Three stories Lucas said he had in mind for Indiana Jones. Turns out that maybe wasn't entirely accurate. And he actually only had one idea for Indiana Jones.

• 15:03Lizzie Bassett?

  I feel like that's the story of George Lucas.

• 15:05Chris Winterbauer?

  These aren't the droids you're looking for. That's just him constantly is trying to like Jedi mind trick his collaborators, I feel like.

• 15:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, it works.

• 15:12Chris Winterbauer?

  It does. So he doesn't have a script. He doesn't have a story, but he has an idea. The next Indiana Jones is going to be dark. In the same way that The Empire Strikes Back was the dark second chapter of Star Wars.

• 15:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm so confused because the end result isn't really. The end result feels more like a cartoon than Raiders of the Lost Ark does. Raiders of the Lost Ark feels darker to me, maybe because of the emotional trajectory of it.

• 15:35Chris Winterbauer?

  I would argue Temple of Doom is far darker than Raiders of the Lost Ark.

• 15:40Lizzie Bassett?

  And heart ripping out and it's just, I don't care, maybe is, is the problem.

• 15:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Like Indiana Jones technically becomes evil during Temple of Doom and slaps Short Round across the face.

• 15:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Thirty seconds.

• 15:51Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm just saying, if you're a child, that's very shocking to see this, you know, as a youngster.

• 15:56Lizzie Bassett?

  He's in very good shape, has lovely arms. He's shirtless when he's evil, I should specify.

• 16:00Chris Winterbauer?

  We'll talk about that. So here's the way Spielberg remembers it. My job and my challenge was to balance the dark side of this Indiana Jones saga with as much comedy as I could afford. Now, it does seem like George was the one pushing for the darker, more morally ambiguous version of Indy, which he had done. If you remember our discussions of the earlier development meetings between Spielberg, Caston and Lucas, which you guys can read a transcript of online. It always felt like George was pushing for the more debonair, morally ambiguous, James Bond-esque sex criminal Indiana Jones. Now Lucas remembers things a little bit differently because Lucas and Spielberg were both in a pretty bad mood. Quote, "Part of it was I was going through a divorce. Steven had just broken up and we were not in a good mood. So we decided on something a little more edgy.

• 16:45Chris Winterbauer?

  To be clear, he had not yet gotten divorced, but things were very strained with Marsha Lucas. And she would privately ask him for a divorce in mid 1982. Spielberg was on and off again with actress Amy Irving." So according to Lucas, this is a folie à deux, a Joker folie à deux situation.

• 17:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Great.

• 17:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, his first idea, kind of fun, is to set the movie in a haunted castle in Scotland.

• 17:08Lizzie Bassett?

  It's just Rocky Horror Picture Show.

• 17:10Chris Winterbauer?

  It is, yeah.

• 17:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Indiana Jones, okay.

• 17:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Spielberg says, I just made Poltergeist, I don't really want to do a ghost Indiana Jones movie. And so Lucas says, okay, okay, let's move the story to Asia. We're going to open it in China and then move it to India. Along the way, Indy would recover something stolen from a village, and then he decides whether or not to give it back. And he's going to be in a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mood the entire time. And Lucas says, this is a great story, but I don't want to write it. We need to hire a writer. And Lizzie, who would be the obvious choice to write this script?

• 17:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Lawrence Kasdan.

• 17:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Lawrence Kasdan, the scribe of Raiders. Although, again, do credit to Philip Kaufman for coming up with the Ark of the Covenant McGuffin.

• 17:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Go back to that. How about the Shroud of Turin? It's gotta be able to do something. I don't know.

• 17:51Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. Kasdan, it seems, could sense that the vibes were off with this one from the beginning. And this is from the man who'd just written The Darkest Star War, but this movie was just too dark for him.

• 18:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Star Wars singular.

• 18:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes. As he later put it, I didn't want to be associated with Temple of Doom. I just thought it was horrible. It's so mean. There's nothing pleasant about it.

• 18:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, I agree.

• 18:13Chris Winterbauer?

  I think Temple of Doom represents a chaotic period in both Spielberg and Lucas's lives, and the movie is very ugly and mean spirited. And George said, well, or, shh, shut up, Lawrence, go away. So he reached out to two writers he'd worked with many times, Willard Hyke and Gloria Katz. Now, Lizzie, you made a bit of a face when I said Howard the Duck, but I will remind you, Hyke and Katz were Oscar nominated for their work Penning American Graffiti, George Lucas's first foray into human emotions. And they'd done polishing and dialogue work on the first Star Wars. These are two very accomplished writers.

• 18:45Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. It's just the duck condoms and the duck breasts. It's a lot to move past.

• 18:50Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know if I could have done better. I'm just gonna say it. Like, the source material, who knows? They have a project in development hell with George Lucas, The Radioland Murders, which would get made in the early to mid 1990s. But writing an Indiana Jones movie with Steven Spielberg to direct, this is as close to a sure thing I feel as a screenwriter could imagine. And they had a funny history of almost working with Steven Spielberg. The first time, Steven Spielberg had asked them to adapt a book called Flushed with pride about Thomas Crapper, who invented the toilet, supposedly. So they wrote a treatment, they send it to Spielberg. He said, this is great, let me send it to my agent. And then they hear nothing. And finally, they call Steven and they say, Steven, what happened to Thomas Crapper? And he said, oh, my agent told me that if this is the kind

• 19:34Chris Winterbauer?

  of film I want to make, he doesn't want to represent me.

• 19:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, no.

• 19:40Chris Winterbauer?

  So that project does not come to fruition. They were looking for a director for their follow up to American Graffiti, Lucky Lady, for Fox. And they think, guys, we should hire Steven Spielberg. They tell the producer, go watch Sugarland Express. It's Spielberg's theatrical debut. Fox digs it, they meet with Spielberg and he says, I'd love to make it, but I'm on the hook to make this shark movie. I wish I could do it, I wish I could get out of it. And of course, that becomes Jaws. The third time, they go to lunch with Spielberg and Spielberg says, I want to do a movie about what would really happen if a spaceship landed on Lost Sianaga. And Hike and Katz are like, I don't know about that, Steven. So they basically pass and that becomes Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

• 20:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 20:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Back to Temple of Doom, which at this point is called Temple of Death. So Lizzie's face.

• 20:23Lizzie Bassett?

  It just, you needed to spend a little bit more time in Hawaii on this one.

• 20:27Chris Winterbauer?

  So Hike and Katz didn't just know Lucas and Spielberg. They weren't just Oscar nominated writers. According to them, they were very interested in Indian culture, which is not super apparent from the finished film, but more on that later. So in May of 1982, Hike, Katz, Spielberg and Lucas gather at the Jedi Council, I mean Skywalker Ranch, for four days of story conferences. And for Hike and Katz, they're saying, this is a dream. There's no story, but there's also no studio. They've worked on projects where there's, you know, 25 people are at a table and you're voting on whether or not to push things forward. In this instance, quote, Steven and George just let you do your own thing. And they're not starting completely from scratch. So if you guys are fans of the Indiana Jones franchise, I'm sure you know this already, but this story features a number of elements that had been developed

• 21:12Chris Winterbauer?

  for Raiders, but ultimately cut from that film. And we talked about this in our episode years ago, Lizzie, on Raiders, but an airplane raft escape, a mini tsunami created by giant vats of water, a minecart chase, a big fight in Shanghai.

• 21:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Where does the vat of water come from? Why is it there? Why do we not see it until they dump it out into the mine shafts?

• 21:32Chris Winterbauer?

  I feel like they built it, forgot about it. And then Steven said, oh, oh, wait, we should shoot that. They did it. By Spielbergian standards, it's perhaps not that well established.

• 21:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Let's say not established at all.

• 21:47Lizzie Bassett?

  We recently moved into a new house and realized that our bedding desperately needed a refresh. So I took my own advice. And before spending all our money on a luxury bedding brand, I went to Quince. And let me tell you, we now have the crispest, coolest, most beautiful organic percale sheets and duvet covers that we've ever had. I've bought quite a bit of bedding from Quince and it's all super high quality and has lasted for years without paying the brand markup. Now, obviously, you shouldn't stop at bedding. You should also refresh your closet with elevated everyday essentials that you will wear over and over again. Think cozy Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at 50 bucks, cashmere scarves, responsibly sourced down jackets, and 14 karat gold jewelry. I genuinely love Quince and I shop here for everything. I walked out the door the other day and realized

• 22:29Lizzie Bassett?

  every single thing I was wearing was Quince, down to my socks. Did I mention their socks are great, too? Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was what went wrong. It's the best way to support the show. Today's episode is sponsored by Mars. You might not realize it, but Mars is behind so many of your favorite Halloween treats. And I'm not just talking about your candy bowl. Yes, Mars makes iconic candies like M&Ms, Snickers, Starburst, my personal favorite, and Skittles. But they also have salty snacks, easy to make meal options, and even treats for your pets. There's something for everyone to enjoy this spooky season. David and I are too old to trick or treat, so we've been getting creative with our Halloween movie

• 23:14Lizzie Bassett?

  night spreads for our friends. I put together a char bootery board with some classic sweets like Rice Krispy treats and peanut butter M&Ms. And because I'm a salty girl, I added some Pringles and my all time favorite snack, Cheez-It crackers. Scary delicious. For Halloween night, I'm making a spooky seven layer dip using Ben's Original Ready Rice because there is nothing that my kid loves more than a rice and bean dip. And don't think I forgot about our dog Q. Mars knows he needs a celebration, too. So I put together a special Halloween treat jar packed with Greenie's Original Pumpkin Spice Dental Chews and Pedigree Tasty Biscuits. He's agreed to share with the neighbors because he's a very good boy. Find Mars products in a retailer near you or on Instagram at Mars Global, M-A-R-S-G-L-O-B-A-L, where you can shop everyday favorites and limited time Halloween offerings.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals. No kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 24:35Chris Winterbauer?

  The reference, though, I mean, obviously, they're pulling material that was excised from the first film. But what they're really doing is pulling a lot of inspiration from a controversial, although somewhat celebrated 1939 film called Gunga Dean.

• 24:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh.

• 24:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie, have you ever seen Gunga Dean before?

• 24:51Lizzie Bassett?

  I have not seen it, but I am familiar with what it is.

• 24:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, George Stevens directed. I know you're going to cover a film of his soon. Probably most famous for Place in the Sun, Shane, Giant.

• 25:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:01Chris Winterbauer?

  It's based on Rudyard Kipling's poem of the same name. It's set in India.

• 25:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Rudyard Kipling, a famously not racist man.

• 25:09Chris Winterbauer?

  So Rudyard Kipling, who features into the third act of this movie. It stars Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Victor McLaughlin. It is, it's so similar to Temple of Doom, not just in the fact that Temple of Doom pulls liberally from this movie, including a rope bridge that the characters nearly fall off. The big gong at the beginning of the film is, in Temple of Doom, is clearly a reference to the gong that is used at the beginning of Gunga Dean to do the credit sequence. The Tuggy cult and the worship of Kali, those are the antagonists in Gunga Dean, and they are the antagonists in this movie.

• 25:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Tell me if I'm wrong. That is a real, the Tuggy cult is real, right? Not in the way that we see it in this movie, but it did exist in the 19th century.

• 25:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Kind of. Let's wait for a second and get to it.

• 25:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, okay.

• 25:54Chris Winterbauer?

  So it's interesting. The way that Gunga Dean presents it, there is a title card that says, "Those portions of this picture dealing with the worship of the goddess Kali are based in historic fact." Not exactly, but we will dive into that in a moment. Again, you just see so many influences here. The whipping of Indiana Jones by the Thuggee cult in this instance. There's a snake pit in this movie that feels like it influenced the first film. There's many hijinks with elephants. The secret cult location being in one of these amazing, beautiful Indian palaces. There's so much pulled from this movie. Also, this movie's clearly the influence for something like Three Kings by David O. Russell. It's about three British soldiers who are also kind of soldiers of fortune,

• 26:36Chris Winterbauer?

  who stumble their way into a situation where they're in conflict with this, quote, Thuggee cult. And then there's a water-bearing character, an Indian man who, it's called a beastie, whose name is Gunga Dean, who's obviously played by a white person in brownface in this instance.

• 26:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Certainly.

• 26:49Chris Winterbauer?

  He's the classic, sort of, the naive foreign-born character who strives to achieve the moral goals of the British and then, like, proves their own moral code to them by dying at the end of the film. Think like Quelick in Galaxy Quest, for example. That's what the poem's about as well. The movie, it's entertaining. It's got some amazing set pieces, some amazing cinematography. And tonally, it's a bit of a mess in the same way that Temple of Doom is. It just goes all over the place. It's a comedy. It's an action movie, you know? Cary Grant's the only person who seems to know what he's in. He is just doing the Shell Oil, you know, sort of thing the whole time.

• 27:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Man, I love Cary Grant. I don't think I've ever seen a movie with Cary Grant in it where, even if the movie is an absolute pile of shit, he is so confident in himself and having a good time. He holds it down every time.

• 27:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. By the way, I don't think Gunga Dean is a pile of shit. It is in some senses, but the review I read that I really agreed with was, "It is classic Hollywood at its both most seductive and pernicious." I thought that was a great way of describing it. So throughout this process, aside from lifting everything from Gunga Dean, they decide to lift from other movies they're working on. So the opening musical number.

• 27:53Lizzie Bassett?

  I loved that.

• 27:54Chris Winterbauer?

  I love it. That's why I like the first 15 minutes so much.

• 27:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, the first 15 minutes are great.

• 27:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. So Lucas suggested this, lifting it from Radioland Murders. So again, they are just moving so quickly for this project that they are just pulling every piece of available material that they can from other references that they already know. They flesh out the Sankara stones, which are fictional, the religious cult, more on that later, and the character of Willie Scott. Okay, Lizzie, who else would it make sense to theoretically maybe bring back for this movie? Were it not the fact that it was a prequel?

• 28:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Karen Allen.

• 28:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly. Karen Allen to play Marion Ravenwood. But because it's set a year before the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and it's set up that it's been years since Indy's seen Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark, you can't really bring her back. Plus, George Lucas wanted Indiana Jones to be a Playboy sex criminal like James Bond, so he figured we should have a different female lead in each movie. Enter Willie Scott.

• 28:47Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't like that. Again, I think what actually works really well about Indiana Jones is that he does have emotional connections to these people, and then they just keep cutting him off. Like, he has a real emotional connection to Marion Ravenwood. He has a real emotional connection to Short Round, and they just cut him off at the knees every time. And I don't really understand why, because Harrison Ford is really good at that.

• 29:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's George Lucas, I think.

• 29:11Lizzie Bassett?

  George Lucas is not like emotional connection, I understand.

• 29:14Chris Winterbauer?

  So Willie Scott, a quote Judy Holiday-type character, who, like Indiana, was named after a dog. Spielberg's dog, in this instance, whose name was Willie. For other characters, they lifted the names of Indian painters, including Mola Ram, who was a famous 17th-century painter who definitely did not remove the beating hearts from people's chests.

• 29:32Lizzie Bassett?

  As far as you know.

• 29:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Right. According to one source, George Lucas also pitched, quote, "a virginal young princess." There were no takers for that idea, so they came up instead with a young boy. They decide to call him Short Round, which is the name of the child sidekick in the low-budget Korean war film, The Steel Helmet, and again, also the name of Heike and Katz's dog.

• 29:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 29:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Short Round leads to another idea about a young Maharaja, and then finally, they add in the story of kidnapped children. Now, regardless of the order of operations, it's again just more and more pastiche. They're pulling from Village of the Damned, for example, when they're making this.

• 30:06Lizzie Bassett?

  You're putting hats on turbans here, guys.

• 30:08Chris Winterbauer?

  So, they need something to keep the audience engaged while explaining the evil cult. Heike and Katz pitch a tiger hunt. And Spielberg says, "There's no way I'm going to stay in India long enough to shoot a tiger hunt." Little did he know, he's not going to actually shoot in India at all. They land on the very controversial dinner scene instead. According to Heike, he and Katz were concerned about- Some of these story elements, quote, "We told George, we know a lot of Indians. We've been to India. I don't think they're going to think this is really so cool. Do you think you're going to have trouble shooting there?" And he said, "Are you kidding? It's me and Steve." Again, to be clear, this is a very dark movie that's blending some real elements of Indian culture, at least words, with heavy stereotypes, tropes, Western fictionalizations, and outright lies.

• 30:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, maybe we should explain a little bit of what you're seeing in the dinner sequence, just in case anybody doesn't remember.

• 30:58Chris Winterbauer?

  So for context, this is a scene in which the esteemed guests at Pankot Palace of the Maharaja, which features an emissary, I shall say, Roshan Seth Chaturlal, he's presented as a British PhD emissary for this Maharaja, serves like beetles to suck the guts out of, eyeball soup, chilled monkey brains, live eels cut out of a dead snake. To be clear, this isn't a country that has a deeply vegetarian lineage to it. I believe almost 40% of India is vegetarian and over 80% limit meat consumption.

• 31:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, some of the most delicious food you could possibly eat. Yes.

• 31:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly. As a vegetarian, huge fan of Indian food. So, according to Hike, though, Steve wanted to do a very dark movie. This was going to be his nightmare movie. Spielberg later said, "We all collaborated together in the screenplay, so it wasn't like I was on the outside under protest, but it really went against my nature in the 80s." I have a really hard time figuring out if Spielberg's doing revisionist history with this movie, or if he really was against a lot of these ideas and they were more coming from Lucas.

• 32:05Lizzie Bassett?

  I believe him just because, obviously, Steven Spielberg has covered a lot of supernatural things, but like, even if you look at something like Jaws, there is an attention to realism and naturalism. And I think that that's the case across even something like E.T., even though I know it's, you know, fantastical. I believe him that this may have irked him.

• 32:25Chris Winterbauer?

  So Hike and Katz go back to L.A. to write, and they get a 500-page transcript of their conversations with Lucas and Spielberg in the mail. And Lucas says, "Get moving," because he is afraid that they are going to lose Steven Spielberg. Hyke and Katz have both said that Lucas pressured them to finish it as quickly as possible so Spielberg wouldn't be able to back out. And according to one secondary source, Spielberg said at the time that he was considering just co-producing the movie with Lucas and not directing it. Spielberg later said he had a lot of concerns about making a sequel. He didn't know if he could top the first one. Could he make it different enough to be creatively satisfying and yet similar enough to attract the same audience? And there's another motivating factor for Hyke and Katz, which is that Katz is now pregnant. So they write the first draft in six weeks. They turn it in at the top of

• 33:07Chris Winterbauer?

  August 1982. They turn around to rewrite in mid-September. Debbie Fine, a researcher at Lucasfilm, noted a bunch of potential problems. Quote, "The Maharaja would not eat monkey brain. The torture scenes are very violent." And apparently, Steven Spielberg loved it. Hyke later said, "Steven was amazed. He couldn't get out of it because we did it so fast." Now, to be clear, Lucas's fears about Spielberg dropping out were well-founded. He'd followed up Raiders of the Lost Ark with E.T. the Extraterrestrial. Released in June of 1982, it quickly became the highest grossing film of all time. Lizzie, how would you describe the tone of E.T. as it relates to Temple of Doom?

• 33:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Uh, I'd say they're on either side of the monkey brain from each other. E.T. is very much geared towards families, children. You know, at its heart, it has the quest to do the right thing. It has, you know, the quest to find your home and your family and the importance of emotional connection. And Temple of Doom just kind of throws all that out into the crocodile river. I did like the crocodile death roles, though. That was good.

• 34:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Lot of cuts to crocodile death roles at the end of this film. Yeah, I agree.

• 34:10Lizzie Bassett?

  They were good. I was glad they included that.

• 34:13Chris Winterbauer?

  In addition, Spielberg's name was also associated with some darkness and an onset tragedy that we've discussed at length on this podcast.

• 34:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Twilight Zone, the movie.

• 34:23Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. In April of 1982, two months before E.T. hit theaters, Spielberg officially agreed to co-produce and co-direct Twilight Zone the Movie with his friend, director John Landis. Before Spielberg shot his segment, Kick the Can, which is very Spielbergian and is the one upbeat segment of the four different components of the Twilight Zone movie, there was a horrible and avoidable onset Accident. On July 23rd, 1982, actor Vic Morrow and two young children who were hired illegally, Micah Din Lee and Renee Shin Chen were killed on John Landis's set. A dangerous helicopter stunt resulted in a crash that killed all three performers. The movie was obviously closely associated with Spielberg's name.

• 35:06Chris Winterbauer?

  One of the crew did claim that Spielberg was on set the night of the accident. He told federal investigators he was never at the Indian dunes location of Twilight Zone on the night of the accident or at any other time.

• 35:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, and if I remember, because we've covered this in a two-part episode from a couple of years ago, as far as I remember from our research, there doesn't seem to be any indication that he was there the night of.

• 35:26Chris Winterbauer?

  He was never directly questioned, he never testified in any of the wrongful death suits that related to the accident, and he later said that 1982 mixed the best, E.T., with the worst, the Twilight Zone, of his career. And he was about to embark on arguably the most controversial film of his career so far as the sole director, but before he could, they needed to find somewhere to shoot. Now, Lizzie, could you imagine some problems trying to get China or India to allow you to film this movie there?

• 35:56Lizzie Bassett?

  The racial insensitivities, particularly towards the Indian culture?

• 36:01Chris Winterbauer?

  So, the script is set both in China and India, so producer Robert Watts figured they should shoot in India and China. The Chinese government passed, and the Indian government didn't love the script. So, Robert Watts said he tried to compromise and set the movie, quote, "in a little principality on the border of India, so it wasn't actually India," end quote. But there were bigger, more fundamental problems that you've pointed out. The government reportedly wanted final cut and asked to make certain changes, like removing the word Maharaja. I believe, though we could not confirm this, that this is because they did not want people to think that the use of words like Maharaja meant that what was being portrayed was not fiction. Maharaja, real word, real part of Indian culture. Eels cut out of snakes being fed to said Maharaja.

• 36:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Maharaja using a voodoo doll, you know what I'm saying?

• 36:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Got it.

• 36:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Not real things being used.

• 36:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 36:50Chris Winterbauer?

  That is our guess. They also apparently did not appreciate portraying the ruler of Pankot, which is a fictional palace or city, as a kidnapper. And master of child slaves.

• 36:59Lizzie Bassett?

  I would think that that would be the bigger issue. Yeah.

• 37:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Or that it misrepresented Tuggy or Thuggy culture as participating in volcano sacrifice and ritualistic heart extraction. All right, Lizzie, you asked some questions on the Tuggies briefly. Okay, so the word thug, you may not know this, I did not know this, traces its roots to the Hindi and Urdu word thag, which means thief or swindler.

• 37:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Did not know that.

• 37:22Chris Winterbauer?

  And according to NPR, this traces back to the Sanskrit verb thagati, to conceal. I apologize if I got that pronunciation wrong. 19th century colonial Brits believed that the, quote, "Thuggy cult was an organized crime gang of sorts that strangled thousands of people across India." And in Gunga Dean, they make the comment that, quote, "The 10,000-strong Tuggy cult killed 30,000 people." These numbers seem completely made up. They, quote, "worshipped Kali, the Hindu goddess of death and destruction, and represented hereditary criminality."

• 37:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Hmm, okay.

• 37:57Chris Winterbauer?

  So the Brits, quote, "hunted them down. 4,000 thugs were discovered, 2,000 convicted, many sentenced to death." Now, it does seem like there was a phenomenon of frequent highway robbery in India in the 19th century, including a number of deaths by strangulation. But the cult angle of the Tuggies seems to have been largely a colonial British myth. So the Tuggies were the subjects of some 19th century English novels, like they showed up in Mark Twain's Following the Equator, and even in the 1960 film, The Stranglers of Bombay, which gives you a sense of how they're being presented. I think that really what this comes down to is that with so few representations of Indian culture in Western media, and specifically, India has an enormous film industry.

• 38:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 38:41Chris Winterbauer?

  The Bollywood film industry, which we have not spoken about. Well, an enormous and diverse film industry that produces an incredible volume of films, very few of which ever breach the border into Western countries, especially the United States. I think you can see why the government would take issue with a number of these elements of the script.

• 38:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, and also, like, to use the name of this Thuggy or Tuggy cult, for example, like, you're using a Real thing, or at least something that was real in that it was referenced by the British government, whether or not it was actually a real secret society or organization. It sounds like we don't know, but you're mixing in just enough. And maybe this is your point about the Maharaja. You're mixing in just enough quote unquote, real recognizable words and ideas to make it potentially problematic with how much you are distorting them.

• 39:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I think the point they're making is like, this is not going to be obviously fictional to a Western audience.

• 39:36Lizzie Bassett?

  I think it's a fair point.

• 39:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Even though it's obviously fictional to an Indian audience.

• 39:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 39:40Chris Winterbauer?

  So Lucas wouldn't budge. So they decide to shoot in Sri Lanka instead for the location work and then L Street Studios in England for all of the stage work. Now they use miniatures and matte paintings to fill in the palace and the temple. And I think there's a certainly like a reasonable interpretation that Spielberg and Lucas were a bit arrogant, given their position within the industry at this point in time. And they may have been miffed that they were turned down by China and given notes by, you know, the Indian government. It's also possible that they were just running out of time because they needed to get this movie going. But Lucas was taking a similar hardline approach back in the United States with Paramount. So according to Barry Diller, the then chairman and CEO of Paramount, Lucas went back on the deal they'd agreed to when they made Raiders.

• 40:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Diller said he'd negotiated terms on Raiders that would ensure Paramount wasn't in the same position as Fox if the film had been successful. Fox had to renegotiate for the sequel rights on Star Wars and Lucas intentionally tried to phase them out as much as possible, which we talked about in Empire Strikes Back. Here's Diller's quote. "I insisted we have the right to make the sequels on the same terms as Raiders, given that the terms on the first movie were so much higher, meaning better, than anyone else had ever received. I wanted to retch once and then not have to regurgitate in a new negotiation if the film was a success." Diller didn't want any new negotiating and yet here's Lucas insisting they negotiate. So Diller is enraged and at first he assumes it's coming from Lucas's lawyers. So he calls Lucas up and Lucas says, "Yeah, no, it's me."

• 41:04Chris Winterbauer?

  According to Diller, Lucas believed it wasn't worth it to make the movie if he wasn't going to get more money. According to Diller, he could not believe this. Lucas, who famously refused to live in Hollywood because he hates the backstabbing nature of this company. Is going back on the deal that he signed with Diller. But Diller gave in because he had to. And then he famously called Lucas a sanctimonious, though supremely talented hypocrite. End quote. So Barry Diller wasn't the only one in a squeeze. Casting director Mike Fenton was running out of time to find Willie Scott. It's early 1983 and he's already seen more than 100 actresses for the role. One very famous blonde actress who was starting to blow up and would especially blow up in the early 90s.

• 41:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Michelle Pfeiffer.

• 41:44Chris Winterbauer?

  It's great guest Sharon Stone.

• 41:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Sharon Stone was my other guest.

• 41:47Chris Winterbauer?

  I believe you. As the story goes, Mike Fenton went jogging with his friend, an agent at William Morris, and he suggested his new client, actress Kate Capshaw. So Capshaw's agent calls her up and he says, they're casting the sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark. Steven Spielberg wants to meet you. And she said, I don't want to meet him. She's 29. She's a special ed teacher turned model turned actress. She'd been in a soap opera, a TV movie. She'd done a comedy called A Little Sex. Fun fact, directed by Bruce Paltrow.

• 42:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, Gwyneth's dad.

• 42:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, she was a serious actress. She wanted to do foreign films and art films. She didn't want to do a sequel with some schmeeven Spielberg. Her agent was, according to Capshaw, very patient and tolerant of my judgment and arrogance. And so we set a time to meet with Steven. She walks into the meeting and it seems like Spielberg's not interested in meeting her. His back's facing her and he turns around and he says, oh, you're not who I thought you were. But then he brings her in to read. She tapes her audition and he's convinced that she's the one. He goes to Ford and he says, I have 19 girls on tape, but I'm only going to show you one. I put Kate's tape in and he immediately said, that's the one. I think maybe she was just screaming. It's unclear exactly what the tape was. Again, I really like Kate Capshaw in this movie. I have a condo on Kate Capshaw as Willie Scott Island. I am the only resident.

• 42:58Lizzie Bassett?

  No, David enjoyed her too. I honestly think that Sharon Stone may have been able to counteract some of the more like maudlin elements of Willie Scott because Sharon Stone has sort of a cold hardness to her that could have gone up against Harrison Ford in a way that I may have personally found a little bit more watchable. It's not to say Kate Capshaw isn't a wonderful performer and actress. I think she's amazing in the opening sequence. Like, I really enjoyed all of that.

• 43:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Although, just want to point out to all of our Mandarin speaking. Listeners, we do acknowledge that that sequence is gibberish, apparently.

• 43:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Really?

• 43:32Chris Winterbauer?

  I've heard, what I've learned online is they did translate the lyrics to Anything Goes into Mandarin. But because it's such a tonal based language where the emphasis and inflection put on words is as important as, you know, the ordering it would be in Western language, it sounds like gibberish.

• 43:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Doesn't make any sense.

• 43:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 43:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Interesting.

• 43:51Chris Winterbauer?

  That's the best I could figure out via Reddit and whatnot.

• 43:53Lizzie Bassett?

  She just, she has like basically no agency in this. And then to cast someone who feels very sweet and sort of soft in a role that has no agency is a little bit of a tough watch.

• 44:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting.

• 44:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, Lizzie, Steven Spielberg told her to watch a movie that we've covered in preparation for this role. Is there any movie that you covered that involves a much steelier performer, perhaps, or steelier performance?

• 44:28Lizzie Bassett?

  I have a guess.

• 44:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Please.

• 44:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Is it The African Queen?

• 44:31Chris Winterbauer?

  It is The African Queen. And maybe that's why she didn't thoroughly read the script because she was busy watching that movie. Which, to be fair, the script was mostly action and difficult to picture in your head. More on that in a bit.

• 44:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, that's a great example, though, because in The African Queen, sure, she's grossed out by the rough and tumble Humphrey Bogart at the beginning, but she also ends up being the one driving them forward into the jungle by the end of it.

• 44:54Chris Winterbauer?

  She's also the protagonist. It's a very different, you know, movie.

• 44:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 44:57Chris Winterbauer?

  I think the biggest hitch in the indie Willie relationship is the fact that ultimately this movie's about indie and short round, for me, at least.

• 45:05Lizzie Bassett?

  A hundred percent. And if that's the case, great, like make it more about that and, you know, get rid of her halfway through. I'm sorry, like she doesn't need to be there at the end.

• 45:15Chris Winterbauer?

  And he's like, bye bye lady, and she's just gone.

• 45:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 45:18Chris Winterbauer?

  So obviously casting short round is going to be important. Spielberg says that they held at least eight open casting calls involving 6,000 boys across New York, San Francisco, Hawaii, Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, Hong Kong, London, and Los Angeles.

• 45:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Ki Hui Kwan was 12 years old when they passed out flyers at his elementary school in Los Angeles.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  He is so cute.

• 45:38Chris Winterbauer?

  One of the teachers thought he knew just the kid for the part. Ki's brother.

• 45:44Speaker 03

  No.

• 45:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Ki had been born in Vietnam into a family of Chinese descent and had eight siblings. Now, the family was split for a period. Ki and his father and five siblings went to Hong Kong and they lived in a refugee camp when his mother and remaining siblings went to Malaysia.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 45:59Chris Winterbauer?

  This is shortly after the Vietnam War ended. The family reunited in the United States in 1979 and they landed in Sunland, Tahunga, up in the northeast corner of Los Angeles, just northwest of Altadena, where I used to live.

• 46:12Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 46:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Back to the audition. Ki tags along with his brother and he says, quote, "As he was auditioning," meaning his brother, "I was behind the camera, coaching him what to do. I had no idea why I was doing that because I didn't even know what was going on." To be clear, I believe Ki, my guess is he didn't really start learning English until 1979 when he came to the United States. So he's only been speaking English for a few years now. So the casting director asked him to come in and do a read and he said he did, but, quote, "I couldn't even pronounce the words."

• 46:37Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 46:38Chris Winterbauer?

  But it didn't matter. Spielberg watched his tape and, quote, "The search stopped at that moment. I just loved his personality. I thought he was a 50-year-old man trapped in this 12-year-old's body." So Ki's mom puts him in a three-piece suit and sends him off to meet Spielberg. There's one more audition with Spielberg, Ford, and apparently Lucas, and I'd like to play you a clip of young Ki Hui Kwan describing this interaction.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  After that, I met Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 47:05Speaker 04

  I don't, I don't know who they are because I, I didn't see, I don't really see American movies, so Steven told us to pretend to play cards.

• 47:17Speaker 03

  Had you ever acted before?

• 47:18Speaker 04

  Uh, no.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  That's extraordinary. There must have been all those child actors waiting for that part and you just walked in there and got it?

• 47:25Lizzie Bassett?

  So cute.

• 47:26Chris Winterbauer?

  So he had never seen a Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, or Harrison Ford movie prior to this meeting.

• 47:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Good.

• 47:34Chris Winterbauer?

  So he hadn't seen Star Wars, he hadn't seen Raiders. He had never acted.

• 47:37Lizzie Bassett?

  That's crazy.

• 47:38Chris Winterbauer?

  And he's improvising in his second language, and possibly third, because actually, now that I think about it, he probably speaks Vietnamese. I know he speaks Cantonese in the beginning of the movie, and then he's speaking in English. And he's improvising the scene, playing cards with Harrison Ford, and that's it. It's just a, I cheat small, you cheat big.

• 47:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 47:55Chris Winterbauer?

  That's the scene that they're doing.

• 47:56Lizzie Bassett?

  He is the shining, beating, ripped-out heart of this movie.

• 48:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Absolutely.

• 48:01Lizzie Bassett?

  And he's honestly the only reason to watch it, because he is so great. And he's great both in terms of his acting, his timing, also his physical comedy and all the action that he's doing. I mean, it really, it is absolutely remarkable.

• 48:15Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. So for the roles of Chatar Lal, who's the advisor to the Maharaja, and Mola Ram, who's the thuggy priest, so to speak, Spielberg and Lucas turned to two actors who had recently appeared in Richard Attenborough's?

• 48:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, Gandhi.

• 48:30Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. British Indian actor, Roshan Seth.

• 48:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I was wondering where I recognized him. Okay.

• 48:35Chris Winterbauer?

  He plays Nehru, who is, he's one of the Indian congressmen who kind of, in act two, is following Gandhi around and coming around to him.

• 48:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 48:44Chris Winterbauer?

  He'd given up acting years earlier. He'd been in the UK for 15 years, and he just was not getting the roles that he wanted. He later told the New York Times, he was, quote, "too English for the Indians and too Indian for the English." And so he returned to India and edited a journal. And then Richard Attenborough convinced him to do Gandhi, and then he returned to journalism. But then that movie came out, and playwright David Hare shows up in India with a role for him to come do in England again. And he just said, you know what? Okay, I'm coming back to acting. And that brings him back into the world of acting, and obviously, Temple of Doom, and many more. And then you have Amrish Puri, who'd played Khan in Gandhi, who, Lizzie, if you remember, in the first act of Gandhi, when he's in South Africa, he's a Muslim Indian merchant at the beginning of the film, who's helping Gandhi at the beginning of the movie.

• 49:27Lizzie Bassett?

  I haven't seen that movie. I remember him less, but I definitely remember.

• 49:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, he's like unrecognizable in comparison to all the makeup and the shaved head. But he's a Wonderful actor and he's the most experienced actor in this movie by a mile. So Amanish Puri had acted in hundreds of films across his career. He is a Bollywood like known name and he'd also just begun what would come to be known as kind of his villain era. He played this antagonistic smuggler in 1982's Vidata, which was the highest grossing Indian film of the year, the fifth highest grossing of the decade adjusted for inflation. He played another big bad in 1983's Hero and he's not interested in Temple of Death at the time, as it was called.

• 50:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Fair enough.

• 50:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Indian casting director Dolly Takur sends stills of him from the 1980 horror film Gera Yee, I'm not sure about the pronunciation, to Steven Spielberg. Now, Gera Yee is kind of an exorcist movie done in India. It actually, it reminds me a little bit of something like The Wailing, for example, if you've seen it out of Korea. And honestly, poltergeist, because a lot of it has to do with the sale of land that has spiritual connections. Brief note also on Dolly Takur, she's like this veteran theater actress, newscaster, journalist, casting director, like really incredible career in life and she'd begun her career as a casting director on Gandhi. And so like she's jumping into, you know, Gandhi, Temple of Doom, that's like a big, high place to start.

• 50:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 50:45Chris Winterbauer?

  So Spielberg sees these stills and he wants Puri even more. And we're pulling this from Puri's book and we had a little bit of a hard time exactly parsing the order of operations here, but it seems like he maybe took offense at the request from casting agents to do a read, because it seems like they were almost wanting to make sure he spoke English, which would be very offensive, because if you were to just watch the first 10 minutes of Gandhi, you'd see.

• 51:09Lizzie Bassett?

  He speaks English, yeah.

• 51:10Chris Winterbauer?

  So he refused to audition or read a page of English text and he said, "Come watch me on the set of his new film", which I tried to figure out what it was, but he's in so many movies that I could not figure it out. In fact, some sources claim he was working on 18 other movies while he was working on Temple of Doom. Whichever movie they saw, Puri was cast, but he had the most difficult schedule to manage, according to producer Robert Watts. Quote, "This was something I had never come up against. The Indian film industry operates in a manner that would drive me stark raving mad. The actors work sometimes two or even three shifts a day, four hour shifts." And they may work on two or three different films. They'll be in one in the morning and another in the afternoon.

• 51:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh my god.

• 51:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Crazy.

• 51:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Is that why he's barely in this movie? Cause there's like almost no establishing of him.

• 51:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I'm not sure. I feel like it makes sense for the character, but it may be, you know, he said they had four different visits, one in Sri Lanka, three in London. And it may be that they just had to write it in strategically because he was unavailable. And he's great, obviously, in this movie.

• 52:10Lizzie Bassett?

  He is great. He's very fun to watch.

• 52:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Now, unlike Star Wars, Ford had signed on to the Indiana Jones sequels from The Jump. And on the one hand, there was one secondary quote we found where Lucas had said they were gonna do five Indiana Jones movies and Ford seems to have bristled at that and said, he must be talking to Roger Moore because I didn't know about this. You know, he didn't want to be known as the sequel guy. But on the other hand, I think he had fewer qualms with the material and character of Indiana Jones than he did with Han Solo and Star Wars.

• 52:35Lizzie Bassett?

  That makes sense. He's the lead.

• 52:37Chris Winterbauer?

  It's also like a recognizable world.

• 52:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 52:39Chris Winterbauer?

  He's not famously, as he said, you know, George, you can write this stuff, but you can't say it when it comes to the Star Wars dialogue. That was not the case with Indiana Jones. In fact, he really likes the Indiana Jones dialogue and we'll get to that in a second. Generally speaking, outside of Indiana Jones and Star Wars, he had not had a big hit. So if you look at, you know, Force 10 from Navarone, 1978, mixed reviews, it flops. Hanover Street, 1979, flops.

• 53:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Never heard of it.

• 53:00Chris Winterbauer?

  The Frisco Kid with Gene Wilder, flops. More American Graffiti, which I think he's barely in, critically flops, does not do as well as the first film. Blade Runner, 1982, famously flops, both critically and commercially. He has a cameo in E.T. as Elliot's principal, but that gets cut. Apocalypse Now was a smash, but he's in it for about 10 minutes.

• 53:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, right. I always forget he's terminate with Extreme Prejudice.

• 53:21Chris Winterbauer?

  That's right. He's great in the conversation, but again, it's a tertiary role. So Ford presumably needs Indiana Jones as much as it needs him. But Spielberg's really worried about how Ford's gonna receive the script. So according to Hyke, quote, "They gave the script to Harrison right after we finished it. Steve called us up and says, have you heard from Harrison? I said, no, I think he'll probably call you first." And Steve says, well, he hasn't called me. I'm really worried. And I said, why? And he said, for one thing, he can make my life really miserable on the set if he's mean to me. To be very afraid of Harrison. So Hyke and Katz get the call. Ford wants to meet them about the script. And they get together to do a read through. It's Spielberg. Spielberg, Hike, Katz, and Ford. They get to a scene with Short Round and Ford hems and haws a bit and I'll try to do a Harrison Ford. This line of Short Round's bothers me.

• 54:04Chris Winterbauer?

  The kid's supposed to be tan. I don't know if he'd say something like this. And Hike and Katz say, yeah, but he's a really cocky kid. That's the whole take on him throughout the film. He's wise cracking with Americanisms and so forth. And Ford says, I don't know. It's a great line. I think it's probably something that Indy would say.

• 54:20Chris Winterbauer?

  And they keep reading. They get to another line and he'd say, I think that's probably something Indy would say. And according to Hike, they would just get to these lines and he'd steal them, which was so obvious that Spielberg apparently left the meeting to watch TV while Ford poaches Short Round's lines. So Hike and Katz do rewrites on the final shooting script in the spring of 1983. And according to Katz, she goes into labor 10 minutes after they print the script out to turn it over. Now, Lizzie, you mentioned Spielberg wanting to find like moments of levity in the movies that he makes, for example. Spielberg famously storyboards intricately for his movies. And that's, I think, obviously why his action set pieces are so inventive and they're so compelling and you remember them.

• 55:00Chris Winterbauer?

  But for this movie, while he did obviously storyboard all of the action set pieces, I'm sure the minecart sequence, for example, a lot of the interstitial scenes, he decided not to storyboard because he later said that he was uncomfortable with how dark the story was and he wanted to leave space to, quote, lighten the mood with humor. Another attempt, perhaps, to lighten the mood was changing the title from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which happened just eight days before shooting began. Which I do think is a more tongue-in-cheek fun title. I think Temple of Death is much darker. So principal photography begins on April 18th, 1983, in Sri Lanka, just a week after the Oscars, where Spielberg lost Best Picture and Best Director to Richard Attenborough and Gandhi.

• 55:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, well.

• 55:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Perhaps Spielberg and Lucas should have known that they were tempting fate. After all, they were spurning local traditions, working with water, children, and animals. Lots of animals in this movie, Lizzie. Harrison Ford said that riding the elephants felt like being stretched out over a medieval rack and not in a fun Jamie Dornan kind of way. Now, you mentioned his body, Lizzie.

• 56:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it looked good.

• 56:03Chris Winterbauer?

  It looks good. He'd been training with. Jake Steinfeld of Body by Jake at a YMCA in Sri Lanka.

• 56:09Lizzie Bassett?

  What is Body by Jake?

• 56:11Chris Winterbauer?

  That's his brand. He was a trainer to the stars. I think he started with Spielberg and Ford back in, you know, back in the eighties. There were some of his first big clients. And then he had, you know, TV series, ton of infomercials and whatnot. Um, very, very, you'd recognize his face if you saw him. Also fun fact, he is, I believe Haley Steinfeld's uncle.

• 56:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 56:27Chris Winterbauer?

  But he started feeling some twinges in his back. More on that in a second. Now during the campfire sequence on the way to Pankot, an elephant started eating Kate Capshaw's one of a kind dress that she still needed to wear for the opening number of the film, which they hadn't shot.

• 56:42Lizzie Bassett?

  She had it coming, man. She is screaming on those elephants.

• 56:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 56:46Lizzie Bassett?

  I gotta say, the sequence where she's like hitting the elephant's trunk away from her, I was so mad. Maybe it's because we just went to the zoo and saw an elephant and it was really beautiful. But I think that's where I lost all faith in Willie Scott.

• 56:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, fair. Although Spielberg probably made that choice, not her.

• 57:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I know it's not her. None of it is her fault.

• 57:04Chris Winterbauer?

  So the elephants did wreak havoc on the schedule because only the baby elephants could be loaded onto a truck. And the bigger ones just had to walk wherever they were going. And it just took as long as it took them to get there. Now, back at the hotel, Mike Culling, the animal wrangler, had brought three 15 foot pythons from England. He checked them into a room under the names Mr. And Mrs. Longfellow. And like Indiana Jones, Kate Capshaw hated snakes.

• 57:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 57:27Chris Winterbauer?

  And she didn't know that there were going to be stinks because she hadn't read the whole script. So producer Frank Marshall took her to visit and pet the snake first, like exposure therapy. It didn't help. It got so bad that Spielberg, when he saw her shaking and hair and makeup before filming the scene, decided to cut the scene, which is why we don't have this Kate Capshaw snake scene. There's one brief moment, obviously, with the elephant.

• 57:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 57:48Chris Winterbauer?

  She was really relieved. And then he said, but you have got to do the bugs. And she's like, what bugs? And Kate, you gotta read the script.

• 57:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Girl.

• 57:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Little did Capshaw know, Culling would spend two weeks in Sri Lanka collecting thousands of insects to bring back to England. On the lighter side, the bridge at the end of the film was created by British engineers who happened to be building a dam nearby. And the dummies that kick and wave off as they fall were made by the effects team. These are supposed to be done by a specialist. In the United States, it slipped through the cracks. So those are just mannequins like made from molds filled with very crude battery powered mechanics, which is why when they fall, they're just like zing, zing.

• 58:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it works fine.

• 58:25Chris Winterbauer?

  It's fine. They had one chance to get the shot right. And that's the shot that you see in the movie because they only had so many mannequins.

• 58:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. But what are they feeding the crocodiles to get them to do the death rolls? Is it the mannequins? Did they?

• 58:36Chris Winterbauer?

  I think it's the mannequins and probably like hamburger meat. They're chumming the water would be my assumption. They got through the location portion of the shoot without too much trouble. They moved to Elstree on May 5th, one day after May the 4th. And the pain is just around the corner. Capshaw took a balsa wood bat to the eye when Key's prop bat split in two, resulted in a black eye, but nothing compared to the bugs, Lizzie. The bugs did not take direction. According to Marshall, you can arrange a pile of snakes. That's impossible with bugs. People were also much more scared of the insects. Every once in a while, you'd hear this shriek when the bugs found their way onto the tap dance rehearsal stage. A bad place for a bug to be. The problem was it didn't seem like a lot of thought was put into how to contain the bugs.

• 59:17Chris Winterbauer?

  According to Steven Spielberg, on the first day, they just lay out thousands of bugs and 75% of them just disappear through the walls.

• 59:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 59:26Chris Winterbauer?

  And the floors.

• 59:26Lizzie Bassett?

  They're bugs.

• 59:27Chris Winterbauer?

  On the first day of shooting. They're gone.

• 59:28Lizzie Bassett?

  That's disgusting. It's like the horses in Lawrence of Arabia, but bugs.

• 59:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, and these are potentially invasive species, to be clear. Like apparently 500 snakes had escaped that same location three years earlier on Raiders of the Lost Ark. And now it's just thousands of bugs going with them. They also needed thousands of bugs to even cover three square feet. The bugs were kept in a cold room before shooting and then they'd bring them in under the hot lights. And of course they'd scatter and hide immediately. They were constantly showing up in the cast and crew's clothes and Capshaw even took a Valium before shooting with them.

• 59:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, 100%.

• 59:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Which probably wasn't helping her achieve the direction that Harrison Ford had given her. Quote, Harrison was constantly reminding me that I was a gal in a B movie and that I didn't need to put notes in the margin. Faster and funnier was all the direction we got.

• 1:00:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay. So it's Harrison Ford's fault.

• 1:00:11Chris Winterbauer?

  It's Harrison Ford's fault. Now, to be fair though, he may have needed the Valium more than anybody because his back pain was getting worse. Now there's some debate over what exactly was the final straw that broke Harrison Ford's back, but it was either getting. around in the mine car or flipping one of the thuggies over his back. Both couldn't have helped. It got to the point where they had to put him on a hospital bed in between takes. And Spielberg realized they couldn't go on like this. But according to some sources, Ford didn't want to stop filming. So Spielberg called Lucas, who is also in a lot of pain. On the one hand, Return of the Jedi had just come out. It's a massive hit, but it had gotten the most mixed critical reception of all of the Star Wars films. And Lucas's marriage was officially and publicly coming to an end with Marcia Lucas. So he hops on a plane to England to help sort things out.

• 1:00:54Chris Winterbauer?

  He later said Harrison was in terrible pain. He would be on a set bed and then they'd sort of lift him up and get him and you'd be sort of walk through things and then you'd get back on the bed. And I said, we can't do this. If we have to shut the picture down, we'll shut the picture down. So they shut it down and send Ford back to the United States to receive medical attention. But they didn't tell Vic Armstrong, Ford's stunt double. So the next day he shows up and goes, where's Harrison? And they go, let's keep shooting with you. And so for the next five weeks, they shot Vic Armstrong as Indiana Jones. And I believe this movie features more Vic Armstrong than any other Indiana Jones movie. And Lizzie, I'd like to show you a photo of these two men standing next to each other because it is crazy.

• 1:01:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, wow. Yep. Go ahead and start rolling.

• 1:01:40Chris Winterbauer?

  So apparently on the first film, when they were in Tunisia, Spielberg had gotten within five feet of Vic Armstrong in the costume, thinking he was Ford.

• 1:01:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 1:01:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Like speaking to him as if he was Ford. So he had doubled Ford a bunch of times before. And Ford has even said that Armstrong added things to the character. According to Armstrong, he did all the stuff releasing the kids, a lot of the mine cart sequence, jumping around the gantry and the big fight on the rock crushing conveyor belt.

• 1:02:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Whoa.

• 1:02:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Back in the United States, Ford decided to undergo a new procedure for his back pain called chemo papain injection, where they take an enzyme derived from papayas, inject it into the herniated disc and dissolve part of it.

• 1:02:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:02:23Chris Winterbauer?

  On the one hand, less invasive than surgery. On the other hand, it had just been approved by the FDA months earlier. Ford said his doctor had only done the procedure a handful of times prior. It's no longer used in the United States and there's a A lot of conflicting information out there about why exactly that is. According to the FDA, it was not discontinued due to safety concerns. But according to Harrison Ford, quote, "They stopped doing it after a couple of years because less qualified surgeons were turning people into paraplegics." Dicey. So while Ford is away, work ramps up on the opening musical number, which is great. And they have George Lucas there to help, but he seems to have been a little distant. And I get the sense that George was in his feelings a lot during this period of production.

• 1:03:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, like, if there's one sequence that I don't think George Lucas is really gonna thrive directing, it's probably this massive sparkly musical number.

• 1:03:10Chris Winterbauer?

  It's possible. So Frank Marshall says there's this big production meeting to discuss storyboards for the second unit shooting they could do while Ford was out. And halfway through, Lucas just gets up and leaves. And he says, "Well, I guess I'll see you guys later." And Spielberg says, "Where are you going?" And he goes, "I've got a guitar lesson." And he just walks out.

• 1:03:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 1:03:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Capshaw was originally supposed to do the entire dance with the backup dancers, but the dress was so tight fitting that they just ditched that plan and they just kind of rotate her out and bring the backup dancers in, which I think works fine. And it also adds to the joke that, like, Willie Scott's not that talented, maybe, and is like doing this, you know, gangster routine as a result.

• 1:03:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Except she sounds great.

• 1:03:48Chris Winterbauer?

  She sounds great. Well, her Mandarin doesn't sound great, but she sounds great. Yes. Now, Ford came back to London and Spielberg basically just shot his close-ups at this point. So they'd shot a lot of the wides with Vic Armstrong. But to be clear, he was still in pain. And for any haters of Body by Jake out there, he believes it's because Jake had gotten him to such good shape that he recovered so quickly. And also, he looks amazing in this movie.

• 1:04:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, he looks really good.

• 1:04:12Chris Winterbauer?

  It's probably like peak Harrison Ford from a physique perspective. It's pretty crazy.

• 1:04:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Definitely. And, you know, we talk about this all the time, but like, think about what his body would probably look like today if this were a modern Indiana Jones.

• 1:04:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, it'd be, you know, Body by DeBolt, Body by Steroids. Yeah.

• 1:04:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. And it's nice that, like, he doesn't, he doesn't look like that. He looks like a gorgeous, jacked archaeologist.

• 1:04:36Chris Winterbauer?

  He does.

• 1:04:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Couple other fun facts. The Minecart set was really an electronically driven roller coaster built onto a soundstage so you could ride on it. It was safe.

• 1:04:51Lizzie Bassett?

  It looks so scary and uncomfortable.

• 1:04:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. There's also a miniature version for a lot of the longer shots where it's going faster.

• 1:04:57Lizzie Bassett?

  When they jump, yeah.

• 1:04:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Yep. The dinner scene features rubber bugs filled with custard. The monkey heads were filled with custard and raspberry sauce. Okay, so Lucas says he wanted it to be, quote, goofy 30s humor.

• 1:05:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:08Chris Winterbauer?

  And Spielberg says that he'd actually been the one that pitched the idea, what about a meal of the worst stuff you would ever imagine eating as long as you live? But Lucas actually came up with the idea to add the eyeball soup and python full of eels, because he and editor Michael Kahn were cutting the movie during production, and they said that there wasn't enough gross stuff in there. So they decided to just double down and add more.

• 1:05:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 1:05:28Chris Winterbauer?

  So they wrap in August of 83, but there are still 15 more days of live action shooting required for the special effects, and they have 75 scenes to be completed by ILM, which is in a very different position than it had been when it was making Raiders. So in a sense, the company's a victim of its own success. The studios all now see ILM as integral to creating blockbusters. So there's a ton of work. But of course, Temple of Doom hits their desks, and it's Lucas and Spielberg, so they can't say, no, we're backed up. So similar to The Empire Strikes Back, they hit a bottleneck at the optical printer stage. As model shop supervisor Lauren Peterson described it, everything had to go through optical at ILM to be composite, and those people were starting to work late into the night, sometimes six and seven days a week, and literally weren't seeing their families.

• 1:06:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Now, according to editor Michael Kahn, the first cut was actually too fast. It clocked in an hour and 55 minutes, and they actually added matte shots, establishing shots, to slow the movie down. But Lizzie, the pace was not what bumped audiences. How do you think early test screenings went for The Temple of Doom?

• 1:06:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm guessing they took a turn when a beating heart was ripped out of a man's chest.

• 1:06:28Chris Winterbauer?

  As Gloria Katz said, everybody was appalled.

• 1:06:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Hike said that they were getting calls from Michael Eisner, then the head of Paramount, and he said, according to Hike, "I'm really worried. Could you guys talk to Steven for us? Because he's not listening to us. It's really violent," end quote. So at this point, there are four ratings: G, PGR, and X, which would later become NC-17. The MPA would- Often struggle to decide if a movie was suitable for children. Now Spielberg apparently did slightly tone down Raiders to get a PG rating. And Raiders by modern standards would definitely be PG 13 at least, like the melting Nazi face.

• 1:07:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, yeah, for sure.

• 1:07:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't think it would be rated R, but I think it would be PG 13. So Spielberg appealed to the MPAA to also make Poltergeist PG instead of R, which by the way, features a man peeling the skin off of his face in the bathroom mirror.

• 1:07:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, Poltergeist also is just horrifying. So if we're going on the level of like, maybe things that children shouldn't see, I think that's on the list.

• 1:07:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Also somehow PG jaws. Spielberg insisted, I don't make R movies, I make PG movies.

• 1:07:33Lizzie Bassett?

  You don't though, ET was.

• 1:07:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, just days before Temple of Doom was released, the MPAA gave it a PG rating. But rumors of a new rating were already brewing. So Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was released in the United States on May 23rd, 1984. It set a record for the largest one week gross, 45.7 million. It would go on to make $333 million worldwide against roughly a $28 million budget. But Paramount was clearly nervous. They'd added a warning to their newspaper ads. This film may be too intense for younger children. But maybe they should have said, a guy's gonna pull another guy's heart out of his chest while it's still beating. Because nobody was expecting that and it really upset a lot of parents.

• 1:08:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Spielberg later said, everybody was screaming, screaming, screaming that it should have had an R rating and I didn't agree. People Magazine gave it a very harsh review that I'd like to read. It is an astonishing violation of the trust people have in Spielberg and Lucas's essentially good natured approach to movies, intended primarily for kids. If they had set out to prove that they could get away with anything, insult the intelligence of viewers and literally make them sick, they couldn't have done it more effectively. No parent should allow a young child to see this traumatizing movie. It would be a cinematic form of child abuse. Even Ford is required to slap Kwan and abuse Capshaw. But then there are no heroes connected with this film, only two villains. Their names are Spielberg and Lucas.

• 1:08:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Disagree with a couple of points there. I would argue there very much is a hero of this movie, though it is neither Willie Scott nor- Indiana Jones.

• 1:09:01Chris Winterbauer?

  No, it's Ki Hui Kwan. Like, Short Round is the hero of this movie.

• 1:09:04Lizzie Bassett?

  100%. I mean, he literally saves them.

• 1:09:06Chris Winterbauer?

  He saves them. He turns Indy. Like, his goodness turns Indy. I love that he's the reminder. Like, he reuses the flame, and then, you know, he's the reminder that pulls him back.

• 1:09:15Lizzie Bassett?

  He saves them at the beginning, he saves them at the end. Like, absolutely, he's the hero. The other thing I disagree with there is essentially saying Steven Spielberg is known for making movies for children. That's like, that's just technically not true. I mean, you know, to your point, he broke out with Jaws. That is not a movie for children. Yes, it was a summer blockbuster, but Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Also not really a movie for children. That's very much an adult movie. E.T., yes.

• 1:09:40Chris Winterbauer?

  I think Close Encounters, though, you could argue, is generally child-friendly.

• 1:09:45Lizzie Bassett?

  They can watch it, but it is not geared towards children.

• 1:09:49Chris Winterbauer?

  It's mature thematically, for sure.

• 1:09:51Lizzie Bassett?

  That's what I mean. Like, if you're gonna call someone a director of, like, children's movies, I actually think you can make more of a case for George Lucas there than you can for Spielberg. I don't think you can make the case for Spielberg on that at all, really.

• 1:10:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I would agree that. I think both of them have one obvious children's-oriented movie, or Lucas two with Return of the Jedi at this point.

• 1:10:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, Spielberg has E.T. Everything else that he's associated with is not explicitly geared towards children.

• 1:10:14Chris Winterbauer?

  I think they're saying Raiders was, but I agree with you that I think Raiders was closer to this in a lot of ways. The point, Lizzie, is that Spielberg's feeling the heat. And then Gremlins is released, and the debate only kicks up. So this is two weeks after Temple of Doom is released, comes Gremlins.

• 1:10:31Lizzie Bassett?

  I love Gremlins.

• 1:10:33Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, it's great. Can you give me, can you give me your gremlin really quickly?

• 1:10:38Chris Winterbauer?

  To this day, the best gremlin I've ever heard outside the movie. The trailers for Gremlins were pretty misleading. Director Joe Tante said they purposefully imitated the color and style of the E.T. ads to remind audiences that Spielberg was an E.P. on this movie. And if you remember, Lizzie, one of the biggest things that people had complaints about was that this movie features a monologue in which the female love interest reveals that her father died pretending to be Santa Claus.

• 1:11:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, because he gets stuck in the chimney.

• 1:11:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Stuck in the chimney, and she discovers him days later.

• 1:11:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Man, I love Gremlins.

• 1:11:08Chris Winterbauer?

  It's so dark. So Spielberg calls up Jack Valenti, who was then the president of the MPAA. And he had developed the rating system in 1968. And if you guys don't know, Jack Valenti, former special assistant to US President Lyndon B. Johnson, famous lobbyist, known hater of the VCR. Fun quote, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone," which is quite a quote.

• 1:11:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 1:11:34Chris Winterbauer?

  He's also the father of producer and executive Courtney Valenti, head of film at Amazon MGM. So Spielberg calls up Valenti and says, "Jack, I'm taking a lot of heat right now." I'm making this quote up. But he apparently calls him up and suggests a new category. And he says that he was the one that suggested they do something like PG 13 or PG 14. And so PG 13 is introduced just three months after Temple of Doom was released. And of course, the first movie to receive the rating.

• 1:12:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Red Dawn.

• 1:12:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze. PG 13 may have solved Temple of Doom's violence, but it likely wouldn't have impacted another element, which a lot of folks took issue with, which is the film's engagement in racist stereotypes. So there was at least one protest of the movie in Seattle organized by Citizens Against Commercial Racism. Protest organizer Aslam Khan, a political science professor, told a local paper, "Imagine a child of Indian background confronted with questions from his classmates who have seen Indiana Jones. Do you eat snakes? Do you have voodoo dolls at home? Why is your religion so stupid?" According to several sources, though we could not directly confirm this, the Indian government temporarily banned the film. Now, for his part, Roshan Seth, who plays Chatar Lal, says he later got a great deal of flack for his participation in the movie.

• 1:12:46Chris Winterbauer?

  "How does an intelligent man like you agree to be in a film that shows Indians dining on beetles and eels?" Now Seth states that Spielberg intended that as a joke. Quote, "The joke being that Indians were so smart that they knew all Westerners think that Indians eat cockroaches, so they served them what they expected. The joke was too subtle for that film."

• 1:13:04Lizzie Bassett?

  I believe that. I believe that. I think you needed something to indicate, though, that that's what was happening.

• 1:13:10Chris Winterbauer?

  If that was the intention, I agree it's too subtle for the film.

• 1:13:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Now, Amrul Pooti later said, "It was a chance of a lifetime working with Spielberg, and I don't regret it even for a moment. I don't think I did anything." Anything anti-national, it's really foolish to take it so seriously and get worked up over it. Now, people were also very worked up about Kate Capshaw's performance as Willie Scott. She got a lot of criticism. Quote, "I don't think there was a good review. I was blindsided by it. The thing that surprised me most was that the critics, women critics in particular, were very critical of Willie Scott, as if we were making a political statement and I was doing nothing for my sisters. I found it odd that it was an action-adventure film and we were meant to be doing message work." End quote. Now, Temple of Doom did win an Oscar for visual effects. It received another nomination for Best Original Score, John Williams. But it's a movie that Spielberg often tries to distance himself from. He's since said that he wasn't happy with it, that it's too dark,

• 1:13:57Chris Winterbauer?

  that, quote, "There's not an ounce of his own personal feeling in the movie", and that it's his least favorite of the original three. He said, "It ended up darker than we thought it would be. Once we got out of our bad moods, which went on for a year or two, we kind of looked at it and went, hmm, we certainly took it to the extreme. That's kind of what we wanted to do, for better or worse." And Lizzie, you talked about how much you liked the beginning of the movie. I wonder if a lot of the criticism actually stems from the fact that the movie opens on a real nice high.

• 1:14:21Lizzie Bassett?

  It does.

• 1:14:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Almost like a joyous high. This is what Roseanne Sess said, you know, quote, "The first 15 minutes of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom are perhaps the greatest 15 minutes in cinema. They're all about what cinema should be, sitting on the edge of your seat in excitement." And I don't disagree that it's one of my favorite openings.

• 1:14:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:14:37Chris Winterbauer?

  It's maybe my favorite opening of the Indiana Jones series.

• 1:14:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Great opening sequence. You know, it's interesting to me that they keep using the word "dark" to describe this movie, because it doesn't strike me, I guess because maybe they were trying to counteract it with what they thought of as levity, it doesn't come across as like dark to me. It comes across as just like a void. It just doesn't have any heart to it.

• 1:14:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 1:14:59Lizzie Bassett?

  And calling it dark almost like negates, I think, what the actual problem with this movie is.

• 1:15:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I think mean-spirited is probably the better way to describe it, which even though I do like this movie, I completely agree with that criticism. I would like to end with the heart of the movie, Ki Hoi Kwan. Let's get to him in one second. So, the legacy of Temple of Doom is complicated, as we talked about, but it's certainly not completely bleak. Amish Pudgy embraced the shaved head look, and he continued to use that look in a lot of his films. It also allowed him to explore a lot of hairstyles via wigs, I read, in subsequent movies. Spielberg and Kate K. Capshaw married a few years later. He actually did get back together with Amy Irving. Oh, no. They got married, then they got divorced, and then he married Kate Capshaw. I've also seen speculation that he and Capshaw were having like an affair on set. But to be clear, I read nothing to confirm that also. And they do seem flirty on like there's an attraction on set. Sure.

• 1:15:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Spielberg was single, to be clear, at this point, is my understanding at this point in time. Also, although Lucas, Spielberg and Ford were having a tough time on set, it doesn't seem like any of the bad mood trickled down to Ki Hui Kwan. So he later said of Lucas and Spielberg, "They were just really nice, down-to-earth, humble people watching me do takes. They were by the monitor and were just laughing and having a really good time. In fact, I was never allowed to watch playback. I shot the entire movie without ever looking at myself on screen." He said that when they're on location, he would just hang out in Harrison Ford's room. Harrison Ford taught him how to swim, and he loved that Harrison Ford just played jokes on Steven all the time on set. So Kwan didn't see Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark until after filming wrapped. Only then did he realize how successful Lucas and Spielberg were.

• 1:16:30Chris Winterbauer?

  And the first time he saw Temple of Doom was at the L.A. premiere. He'd fallen in love with the movie when he made it, but he fell in love with movie making as a career when he saw the movie played back. But the movies can be cruel. So Ki Hui Kwan followed up Temple of Doom with his turn as Data in Goonies, which was another Amblin production. But he faced a drought of opportunities that far too many Asian-American actors face. And he did end up taking a 19-year hiatus from acting, turning to stunt and choreography work. And before we wrap him, a brief point. When I was trying to look up reactions to this movie, because I always like to get a sense of how do people feel about this movie? You know, do my reactions seem to match other folks or not? There's a lot of criticism, obviously, about the portrayal of Indian culture in this movie,

• 1:17:14Chris Winterbauer?

  which makes complete sense to me, and I hope we've done a good job exploring on this episode. But there were also a number of people who were saying that they really felt that Short Round was a racist stereotype, which I wonder if there's a way to parse this in two directions. I disagree. I think he's a great character. I read some people saying like, you know, oh, they're making him do an exaggerated accent. Having listened to him in interviews at the time, I believe that's the way he spoke. He had just started to learn English. It makes sense for the character. Think he's given the hero's arc in this movie. That's why I loved this movie as a kid so much. But on the other hand, I did read a lot of people, especially on Reddit and a couple of film critics saying, because of the dearth of any, think about, this is the eighties, right?

• 1:17:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:53Chris Winterbauer?

  You have John Hughes, you know what I mean? Where it's like, we're going to engage in Asian stereotypes for high school students. Because there is a dearth of any other Asian American representation at the time. It seems like a lot of folks were very frustrated with this movie because they would be the, you know, the one Asian kid at their school. And then all of a sudden, all their white friends would come up to them and like start yelling Dr. Jones in their face as if, you know, they are short round in this instance. And so the problem becomes the lack of other roles around short round. And, you know, it is what kind of makes the most sense to me. And again, which is this void that Ki Hui Kwan, who's untrained and amazing in this movie, steps into as an actor in Hollywood at the time. You know, he would later say, there's nowhere to go but down from Spielberg and Lucas,

• 1:18:37Chris Winterbauer?

  which is somewhat true, but really this should have been like a launch pad. You know what I mean?

• 1:18:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, because he's wonderful in this.

• 1:18:43Chris Winterbauer?

  So he takes a 19 year hiatus from acting. He turns to stunt and choreography work. And then of course, the movie he shoots in 2020, which doesn't get released until 2022 by Daniels, Everything Everywhere All at Once brings Ki Hui Kwan full circle. Instead of a 50 year old man in the body of a 12 year old boy. What I love about that movie is that it feels like he's a 12 year old boy in the body of a 50 year old man. And he brings the same joy, also incredible fight choreography.

• 1:19:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:19:10Chris Winterbauer?

  And heart.

• 1:19:11Lizzie Bassett?

  That's the thing.

• 1:19:12Chris Winterbauer?

  To that movie.

• 1:19:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Is he's a hero, like he gets to be a hero. He gets to be a romantic love interest. It's so wonderful.

• 1:19:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Apparently Spielberg has sent him a Christmas gift every year.

• 1:19:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh.

• 1:19:23Chris Winterbauer?

  For the last 38 years between making Temple of Doom and now. But he had not seen Harrison Ford in 38 years. And I would like to play you a brief clip of him describing their reunion after Everything Everywhere All at Once.

• 1:19:39Speaker 05

  Well, I haven't seen Harrison Ford in 38 years. So I was scheduled to attend an event called D23 for Disney. And I was told that Harrison Ford was going to be there. And I was in the green room and I was looking around the room, trying to see if I can find him. And, and my assistant came running up to me and says, Harrison Ford is just right outside the green room. And I got really nervous. My heart was pounding and, and he says, do you want to go see him? And I said, of course I want to go see him. So I walked out and sure enough, 15 feet away, I saw him talking to Phoebe Waller-Bridge. And as I get closer, he turns to me and he takes one look at me.

• 1:20:22Speaker 05

  And all of a sudden, he has that classic Harrison Ford grumpy look like this. And he raises his finger like pointing at me. And I got really scared because I thought he, you know, he's thinking I'm a fan. He's gonna say, don't you get near me, right? But instead, he says, are you short round?

• 1:20:43Speaker 05

  And immediately, I was transported back to 1984, when I was a little kid, looking up to him. And I said, yes, Indy.

• 1:20:55Chris Winterbauer?

  And that was their reunion and they hugged and they chatted. And then, Kehoe Kwan won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his turn in Everything Everywhere All at Once. And when the film won Best Picture, Harrison Ford presented the award in a fun conclusion. And that concludes our coverage of Temple of Doom. And Lizzie, before I ask you what went right, can I share my solve?

• 1:21:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:21:17Chris Winterbauer?

  My Temple of Doom solve, if you were to remake Temple of Doom.

• 1:21:20Lizzie Bassett?

  We've all been waiting.

• 1:21:21Chris Winterbauer?

  The solve is that the Thuggee cult is actually a front.

• 1:21:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Created by the British who are exploiting the local children to mine, you know, these materials and find the Sankara stones. And it could just be like, think Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, right? It's like one colonial British guy who's gone off the end.

• 1:21:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Chris, if there's another safe villain next to the Nazis, it's gotta be the colonial Brits.

• 1:21:47Chris Winterbauer?

  And I feel like by then, we knew that we could make the colonial Brits the villains because they were the villains in Gandhi. And so it just feels like it's sitting. My point is like, sometimes it's totally unfair and people have called us out to do revisionist history on some of these movies.

• 1:22:00Lizzie Bassett?

  No, this one just sounds like it was so fast.

• 1:22:02Chris Winterbauer?

  I think it was right there and they just made it too quickly. But I actually do think this is one that, and Hake and Katz are so talented like as writers. I really do love a lot of sequences in this movie, but it feels like they were moving so quickly that they never stopped and really thought. They wanted to make Gunga Dean and like a 1930s style movie. But they didn't take the time to figure out how to make it feel fresh, I think. And that's like, to me, that is ultimately like the biggest flaw of this movie. And from that original sin come the stereotypes and whatnot that kind of bog it down. But anyway, I will kick it to you, Lizzie, for what went right.

• 1:22:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, my what went right is obvious. By the way, I would have loved to have seen that. I think that would have made this movie excellent and something different and unexpected. My what went right is Ki Hui Kwan. He is, as we discussed across this whole episode, honestly, he's the only joyful part of this movie. To me, he's the only part that I looked forward to every time he came on screen. Physically, he's such a great performer. It is absolutely remarkable that he had not done any acting prior to this. I didn't know that. I just love him. I love the story arc that he ended up getting. I love that he has become a success, although obviously it came far too late. And I wish we had gotten mid-career Ki Hui Kwan as well. But I'm thrilled that he's back. I just think that he is a one of a kind performer.

• 1:23:19Lizzie Bassett?

  And as we've said, he is the hero and the heart of this movie. And without him, I think it's like borderline unwatchable.

• 1:23:28Chris Winterbauer?

  I completely agree. I want to give mine to Harrison Ford in this instance. And the reason is like, look, to be fair, Ki Hui Kwan is very, he's always generous in his interviews, right? He will never say something bad about anybody. So I want to caveat this, but it sounds like Ford had a really, I cannot imagine doing a role this physical while you're dealing with like a herniated disc in your back. And yet it sounds like they had a really lovely, almost parent child relationship on this movie.

• 1:23:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, you can tell they like each other.

• 1:23:57Chris Winterbauer?

  And that's really cool because there are some actors and some performers or some crew members or directors who are not interested in any personal relationship beyond the professional one. And there's nothing wrong with that. But this young man is thousands of miles away from home, doing his first movie experience with one of the, unbeknownst to him, one of the biggest movie stars in the world. And he taught him how to swim. And Ki Hui Kwan, you know, told a story that I almost put in here where I believe it's when they're shooting the scene where he, it's either one of the minecart scenes or when Indy slaps him. I couldn't find the context, but he got very scared. Kewa Kwan started crying and Harrison Ford apparently pulled him aside and said, "I need you to know, I would never hurt you."

• 1:24:36Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh.

• 1:24:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, "I will always protect you. I would never..." And he said that, you know, "Having Indiana Jones tell me that, you know, he loved me and he was gonna protect me just made all the difference in the world." And by the way, also kudos to Spielberg. It sounds like he did a very good job in coaching and directing this young actor, and he's very good with kids.

• 1:24:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:50Chris Winterbauer?

  So despite how gnarly this movie is in so many ways, intentionally and unintentionally, it was still a good set for this young performer. And we've, we've covered so many movies where that's not the case.

• 1:25:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:03Chris Winterbauer?

  All right. Lizzie, if folks are enjoying this podcast, how can they support it?

• 1:25:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, you can tell a friend or family member, "Go listen to What Went Wrong." They just covered Temple of Doom. It'll rip your heart out. Or, if you want to take it to the next level, you can leave a rating or a review on whatever podcatcher you're listening to this on. If you would like more What Went Wrong content, you can also subscribe on Apple or Spotify and you will get at least one bonus episode every month that is not available unless you subscribe. And in fact, this month, we have two. We just covered Devil Wears Prada 2, and we will be covering The Mandalorian and Grogu at the end of this month. And if you want to go all the way into the Temple of Doom Death, you can join our Patreon. For just $5, you get everything that I've mentioned previously. Plus, you get to enjoy the community

• 1:25:51Lizzie Bassett?

  there. There are polls, there are interactions, there are posts, there's extra credit. There's a lot of things. You should join our Patreon.

• 1:25:58Chris Winterbauer?

  There are interactions.

• 1:26:00Lizzie Bassett?

  There are interactions.

• 1:26:01Chris Winterbauer?

  What a euphemism.

• 1:26:03Lizzie Bassett?

  You're gonna love it. And for $50 a month, you get everything I've just mentioned: interactions, bonus episodes, all of the above. Plus, you get a special shout out, just like one of these.

• 1:26:18Chris Winterbauer?

  George Lucas here. Just wanted to say a few things about Temple of Doom. You know, Steven was, was, uh, he was fully on board. Uh, this movie was as much, uh, his idea as it was mine. He also, uh, he also wanted Indiana Jones to, uh, be a sex criminal. Don't let them tell you otherwise. Film's a collaborative medium. You couldn't do it. I couldn't have done it without Steven, him without me, and then this podcast couldn't be made without you guys. So Nate Ashley, Beatrix Erhart, the cast and crew of When A Trip To Brown Town, Mark Bertha, Mary Postus-Humans, Frankenstein, Angeline Renee Cook, Evan Downey,

• 1:27:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Jose Emiliano Salto Dill Giorgio, Amy Olga Schalker McCoy. You know, I wanted to make experimental films. So this is mostly Steven, not so much me. Jory Hillpiper, Felicia G., Scott O'Shea, Karina Kanaba, James McAvoy, Cameron Smith, Suzanne Johnson, Ben Schindelman, The Provost's Family, Galen and Miguel, The Broken Glass Kids. And you need to remember Willard Hike and Gloria Katz, they were the experts on Indian culture. Not me. David Friskalanti, Film It Yourself, Chris Zaka, Kate Elrington, M. Zodiac, C. Grace B.,

• 1:27:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Blaze Ambrose, Rural Juror, Nate the Knife, Lena, LJ.

• 1:27:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Did I add the eyeball soup and the eels? Yes. But you know, my thinking was, if you're gonna do it halfway, you might as well go all the way.

• 1:28:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Half Grey Hound, Brittany Morris, Darren and Dale Conkling, Matthew Jacobson, Grace Potter, J.J. Rapido, Lazy Freddy, Sadie, just Sadie, Brian Donahue, Adrian Pang Korea. You know, I couldn't have been making these decisions. I was doing guitar lessons, as you guys know. So Chris Liel, Kathleen Olson, Brooke, Steve Winterbauer, Don Schibl, Rosemary Southward, Tom Kristin, Jason Frankel, Selman Shinani, Michael McGrath, Lydia Howes. Yeah, so you know, Temple of Doom. Was, was, it was all of us, uh, equal amounts.

• 1:28:44Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. Thank you so much for that, Chris. Next week, we have, you know, a movie that I would argue goes about 10 steps further in terms of the racist depiction of an Asian character. Chris, what do we have coming up?

• 1:29:00Chris Winterbauer?

  We have Breakfast at Tiffany's.

• 1:29:02Lizzie Bassett?

  We do.

• 1:29:02Chris Winterbauer?

  But before we have Breakfast at Tiffany's, we're doing a really fun dive into the work that really broke Truman Capote out.

• 1:29:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:29:10Chris Winterbauer?

  I know he was already broken out, but the work he would be most remembered for in Cold Blood. We're discussing The Real Case, The Cluttermurs. Lizzie is walking me through that. We're also talking about the 1967 film and of course Truman Capote's groundbreaking true crime.

• 1:29:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Novel.

• 1:29:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Nonfiction novel.

• 1:29:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:29:28Chris Winterbauer?

  In Cold Blood.

• 1:29:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So come on Friday for that. It's not essential that you listen to that prior to the Breakfast at Tiffany's episode. They're going to be very different, but I do think it's a good companion piece to understand more about Truman Capote, especially because the movie adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's is so drastically different from the novella, which we will discuss in the episode. So I'm very excited for that. It's maybe one of the, it's one of the weirdest adaptations in terms of what they did from book to screen that I think we have covered. So come back on Friday for In Cold Blood, which I actually think is a wonderful film adaptation of that book. And then come back on Monday for a full episode on Breakfast at Tiffany's.

• 1:30:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Until then, thanks for listening, guys.

• 1:30:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Bye.

• 1:30:17Speaker 06

  To support What Went Wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, subscribe on Patreon, Apple or Spotify for $5 a month. Patreon subscriptions also come with an ad-free RSS feed. You can also visit our website, whatwentwrongpod.com for more info. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krupso.